


The Dead of Night

by Viridian5



Series: The Same Old Refrain [1]
Category: Andromeda
Genre: Drama, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-07-24
Updated: 2001-07-24
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dylan finds an unexpected bond with Harper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dead of Night

**Author's Note:**

> In this or any time period, "The Dead of Night" is by Depeche Mode, while _The Dark Side of the Moon_ is by Pink Floyd. _The Wizard of Oz_ belongs to the world.

The loud, static-filled racket drew Dylan to the machine shop. It didn't take much effort to figure out who would be responsible for it, but he wanted to see what Harper was up to this time. It might dispel the free-floating melancholy he'd been afflicted with. Then he made out the drumbeat and a familiar tune. This could be a good distraction and fun too.

Trance, grinning, waved to him as he walked in, but Harper, who must have been crouched down behind his current project, remained oblivious. Harper sang, "We're the decadent boys / With the decadent toys / We're the rulers of worlds / And we get all the girls...." then stopped the music. "You think?"

"I'm not sure that those are the lines," Trance said, declining to let Harper know that Dylan had walked in.

The song started again from the beginning. "No?"

"No."

"But I like 'decadent boys with the decadent toys.'"

Unable to resist any longer, Dylan said, "So do I."

Looking surprised, Harper popped up as if he had springs, and the music abruptly cut off. He had his plug in, which connected him to a music player nearby and made him seem oddly like a part of it. Fatigued and bit giddy, Dylan thought of the advertising copy that might go along with that. Plays clips with crystal clarity and comes with an external engineer attachment?

"Oh, _really_? In what sense?" Harper just grinned more broadly when Trance smacked his arm. "You couldn't sleep either, Dylan?"

"It seems to be going around. What are you doing?"

Trance said, "I'm here to take care of Harper's plant."

Harper answered, "She says having some green, living thing in my machine shop is healthy for me but knows that it doesn't work the other way around since I have the black thumb of death. So Trance comes by to save it from me. Me, I'm working, entertaining Trance," he smiled blindingly at her, and she smiled back, "and trying to make out the lyrics from this song clip. I like how scuzzy the song sounds, and it seems like it was meant to sound that way, but the vocal tracks are really degraded."

"Harper already cleaned it up a bit."

"You find the strangest old shit while doing salvage, and you can make decent money selling these things. There's a collectors' market, and some artists patch, repair, and splice them together."

"My favorite found music collage is 'Our Love is Here to Stay/Not Just for a While.' Harper likes the fast ones better."

"Hey, 'Our Love...' is great if you like squealing microphones. I don't." Harper closed his eyes and moved his head a little, turning the music back on via his port connection. "This is a copy I made to keep for myself."

Dylan tried to hide his smile as he said, "It sounds like malfunctioning machinery."

"To an engineer, it sounds like job security with a beat." Harper did a little ass-shaking dance step that made Trance giggle. "I'm part deciphering the lyrics and part making up my own."

"She's right about your version, charming as it is, not being right, though."

"Yeah? Enlighten us, o fearless leader."

"It should be," and Dylan started to sing a little, even knowing that he would be off tune, "'We're the horniest boys / With the corniest ploys / Who take the easiest girls / To our sleaziest worlds.'" Harper had sounded better singing, but that wasn't the point.

The stunned look on Harper's face was. "You-- You--"

"That really isn't a nice song," Trance said but with a smile.

"Which is why I like it. And I wasn't so far off." Laughing, Harper asked, "Okay, how?"

"Salvagers have been finding things for centuries, Harper. The All-Systems University had a special collection compiled by students and historians who thought it snobbish to keep records only of higher brow ancient music like classical, opera, and jazz or only of ancient films universally acclaimed as classics. They used to compare variant copies to make the best, most complete version possible. I was on the main campus when someone brought in that version of _The Wizard of Oz_ that had a different audio track from all the others that had been found. You wouldn't believe the arguments."

Harper smirked. "Did it have _The Dark Side of the Moon_ as its accompaniment?"

"Maybe. I think that phrase was in there as part of the lyrics. How did you--"

"It's the name of that audio track as a whole. You didn't have many people from Earth at the university, did you?"

"Perhaps we didn't. You're saying that anyone from Earth could have cleared it up? They still hadn't come to any conclusions before I--" Before he'd been frozen in time in the event horizon of a black hole. Dylan wondered sometimes if campuses of the university still ran on Tarn-Vedra 300 years after the planet had been cut off from everyone else.

It all left him with a deep throb of homesickness.

Harper waited for him to finish his sentence, but when he didn't, answered, "Not _anyone_, but I could have. I think I know about as much about it as anyone alive does. You like my song?"

"You're not going to tell me about the variant audio track?"

"You're not going to admit to liking this song enough that you know the words?"

"Nope." Pushing the homesickness away, determined to let Harper put him in a better mood, Dylan crossed his arms and put on his most superior expression. "We have a stand-off."

Harper bowed his head in surrender, though he still kept moving along to the music. "It's a mystery as to whether the _Dark Side of the Moon_ album had been deliberately timed and arranged to let you use it as an alternate track. Hell, nobody knows for sure how somebody figured you could use it that way to begin with. It was never an official thing that went with the movie, far as I know. A lot got lost over the millennia. Old Earth drugs and a sense of humor seem to have roles in the matter. I'm not sure where laser light shows factor in, though. Okay, I gave. Now it's your turn. It's fair."

"A Than friend I knew in my first year thought it was the funniest thing she'd ever heard, especially once I told her what it was referring to. She studied human culture as a hobby."

"And?"

"And I like it too even if I find its lyrics mildly appalling. I own a copy."

Harper stilled. "A copy. One of those best, most complete version copies you mentioned? On board?"

"Could be."

Harper turned away, utterly casual. "Maybe I don't want to have the answers handed to me. Maybe I'd rather keep working on mine. Hard work making the ultimate victory all the sweeter and all."

"Like you believe that."

"I could."

"You could do that, though it sounds like your third stanza is completely indecipherable. David Gahan's rendition makes the lyrics there hard to understand even in the best versions we have available."

"You know the name of--" Harper's fingers tapped on the wall. "Anybody else know that the pure, noble, merciful thing you have going is an act?"

"Nope."

"I do," Trance said.

Harper smirked, then asked, "Dylan, are you making an offer here or just torturing me?"

"I'm trying to decide."

"Uh, guys? I don't have Harper's energy, so I'm going to bed. Right now," Trance said. She dimpled at both of them. It contrasted with the almost sly look in her eyes. "Good night." She briefly rubbed Harper's back, smiled at Dylan, then left at high speed.

"You said that you like decadent boys with decadent toys. I do too," Harper said. "But it's not nice to dangle your toys in front of someone if you don't have any intention of sharing."

Dylan didn't know himself just how much he was dangling in front of Harper. Come to my quarters, little boy; I've got some candy? What was wrong with him? "You're right."

"Of course I am. The Harper is always right."

"Except when he isn't."

"Never happens." Harper looked searchingly at him. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong."

"Of course something is. I say so, and the Harper's always right."

"Harper."

"Okay. There's nothing wrong. All is right in your world."

To his own surprise, Dylan said, "I hate how quiet the corridors can get."

Eyes suddenly too intense, Harper nodded. "It must be hard for you to go down from 4,000 people to just six aside from yourself." Sometimes he saw too much.

"Yeah." But Dylan didn't have to live with the quiet. "I do have a copy on board, for sentimental reasons. You're welcome to come hear it if you'd like."

Harper smiled. "Thought you'd never ask."

 

### End


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